“It didn’t happen that way.”

We certainly live in strange times! Truth seems to be whatever anyone wishes it to be, regardless. One of the great poets of the 20th century was Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Much has been written about Milosz who has been called a poet of memory and a poet of witness. I thoroughly encourage you to read his poems and about his remarkable life. From New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 I share his poem Zone of Silence. Might it stir in us the courage not to remain silent but to always seek out and speak the truth, regardless.

Zone of Silence
Truth is a terrible thing. We should not share with anyone more than a given person
is able to bear. Above all. we should not reveal our own truth, should not force anyone
to accept it, to dispose anyone to know things that are beyond human strength.
– Zygmunt Mycielski, A Quasi-Diary

It didn’t happen that way.
Yet no one dares to tell how it did happen.
I am old enough to remember,
and yet like others I repat the socially acceptable words,
for I do not feel authorized
to reveal a truth too cruel for the human heart.

Prayer:
Holy, and Loving God,
I feel trapped in the lies that
entangle my world. The “truth”
seems so difficult to hold on to,
so hard to find, and harder still
to share.
From the gospels you O Lord
remind us that the truth shall set us free.
Today I pray that your truth will set me free,
and free I will remain to speak and bear witness
to the truth which should set all free. Amen.